Revisit the warmth of childhood in Cloudspotting

Many moments from childhood follow us through life, evoked through a familiar place, smell or feeling, and transporting us back to that treasured time. For Canberra author Samantha Tidy, moments spent on the ocean with her father have always held a special place in her heart; moments she has captured in her newest children’s book, Cloudspotting.

Hitting the shelves around the middle of this month, Tidy and Canberra illustrator Susannah Crispe worked together to bring the vision to life, intertwining their important moments. The women say it is rare that an author and illustrator will be in the same city, and appreciated the time they could spend discussing ideas and memories.

Growing up in Perth, Tidy recalls being the only one of her siblings to go crabbing for blue manna crabs with their father, spending precious time in those early mornings quietly sitting together.

During the pandemic, Tidy visited her father during one of the travel windows. Whilst back in her hometown, someone o ered to take the pair crabbing, something they hadn’t done since the author was young. She and her 79-year-old father boarded a boat and set out together, planting the seed for her new book.

She says the book is a quiet and patient reminder of how important it is to cherish moments with family when you’re young.

“I used the idea of clouds because when you look at clouds, they move on pretty quickly. For me, that captures the ephemeral nature of childhood,” says Tidy.

Crispe says marrying the nature of clouds to art was easy; the two go hand in hand. Coming from a background studying art history and zoology, the illustrator and her young son spend a lot of time in nature looking for faces in bark and trees and shapes in the clouds. She has brought a love of finding creatures in nature, where they may only be a hint of them alive on the pages.

“There are a lot of creatures if you look at the clouds; there’s a dragon on the front cover. So a little challenge for kids to go back through – a stegosaurus sleeping, a cat chasing a mouse,” Crispe says.

Cloudspotting hits the bookshelves mid-March. For more of their work, follow Samantha Tidy at samanthatidy.com and Susannah Crispe at ohsusannah.com.au Full story online.

- Jessica Cordwell